Joe Biden’s coronavirus plan, explained

[homersapien 11,447]

The plan draws a sharp contrast to Trump’s response so far.

By the time Joe Biden would actually take the oath of office, the coronavirus pandemic will likely be dramatically different — if it hasn’t ended entirely.

But the Democratic presidential candidate still gave a speech and released a detailed plan on Thursday to combat the pandemic, drawing a sharp contrast to President Donald Trump and his administration’s floundering response to the outbreak.

The plan and speech gave Biden a chance to reiterate the core message of his campaign: a promise to return to more normal, competent policymaking after years of chaos and uncertainty under Trump. It’s a particularly effective contrast after Trump gave a speech on Wednesday night that almost immediately resulted in a slew of corrections by the administration and provided no ideas for how the administration will stop Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, from spreading within the US.

“The markets will respond to strong, steady, and capable leadership that addresses the root of the problem, not efforts to cover it up,” Biden said.

Biden’s plan takes a two-pronged approach to the coronavirus outbreak. First, he promises “a decisive public health response” focused on free testing, improved access to treatment, the development of a vaccine and treatments, and increased health care capacity. Second, he calls for “a decisive economic response” that prioritizes paid sick leave for anyone hit by the outbreak, as well as aid to hard-hit families and state and local governments.

It’s largely in line with what experts have called for in response to the current coronavirus pandemic. That’s in some ways not too surprising: Ron Klain, who headed President Barack Obama’s response to the 2014-’15 Ebola outbreak, is a key adviser to Biden’s campaign.

But it’s also something Biden emphasized in his speech.

“We’ll lead with science. We’ll listen to the experts. We’ll heed their advice,” he said. “And we’ll build American leadership and rebuild it to rally the world to meet the global threats we’re likely to face again.”

By comparison, Trump has repeatedly whiffed attempts to address the coronavirus. His administration’s rollout of test kits has been botched, with the US testing a fraction of the people of countries with smaller outbreaks. He’s focused largely on border control policies, like a travel ban for Europe, which critics call both xenophobic and ineffective now that the virus is transmitting within communities in the US, not coming from outside the country. And he’s so far refused to support or act on measures that could help people stay at home and avoid spreading the disease, like paid sick leave.

“The virus is already in the United States,” Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “Trying for containment at our borders is not a very effective use of resources or a way to really stem the tide. Most public health experts believe we need to be focusing on mitigation, on social distancing, on testing, on creating the systems that will support people within the US to get what they need and be prepared for social disruption.”

Biden, at least, is using this moment to focus on those policies that experts have pushed for. And while he likely won’t be able to implement this plan before the current coronavirus pandemic recedes, the moment is letting him draw a huge contrast to Trump.

What Biden’s plan would do

At the top of Biden’s plan is a promise to “establish and manage a permanent, professional, sufficiently resourced public health and first responder system that protects the American people.”

He’d do this, the plan states, by bringing back the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, which Trump previously cut.

According to experts, this kind of agency is crucial to responding to any disease outbreak. It would focus on coordinating efforts between the many agencies in the sprawling federal government, helping ensure they’re doing the most they can and working toward a single goal.

But it’s important to have this kind of agency set up before an outbreak. Setting up an agency takes time; it requires hiring staff, handing out tasks and expected workloads, creating internal policies, and so on. A preexisting agency is also going to have plans worked out before an outbreak, with likely contingencies in place for what to do. So it’s important that Biden is promising that this type of groundwork will be permanent — in a contrast to Trump’s approach.

“The basic systems need to be in place for global, state, and local responses,” Kates said. “When you don’t shore those up, you’re not starting from scratch, but you’re catching up every single time.”

Biden’s plan also calls for more free and widely available testing — ensuring that tests are free and available for everyone, establishing mobile test sites, providing public reports on how many tests have been done, and expanding government surveillance capabilities. This is crucial to stopping a pandemic: Through testing, public health officials and staff can detect who’s sick, isolate them, trace anyone the sick person has come in contact with, and make sure those people are taking steps, such as staying at home, to prevent spreading the disease, too. But without testing, none of this is possible.

The plan promises other public health steps, including building up health care capacity and equipment, boosting telemedicine capabilities, and accelerating research and development of treatments and vaccines for Covid-19. It also calls for a large boost in funding, directed for the most part to state and local governments, to help impacted areas. Along with all of this, the plan promises “timely information and medical advice and guidance” as part of a broader effort to “stop the political theater and willful misinformation that has heightened confusion and discrimination” around Covid-19.

Biden also calls for several measures to help mitigate the impact the coronavirus is already having on the economy. That includes paid sick leave — both in an emergency program funded by the federal government and a longer-term proposal primarily implemented by employers. It also includes several steps to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for health care, including by making it easier to enroll in Medicaid. And Biden backs other efforts to provide relief to hard-hit workers, including expanded unemployment insurance benefits, assistance for schools, and increased food relief for low-income families and children.

These kinds of efforts are crucial not just to fight a recession, experts say, but to actually get people to follow safe practices that can help stop the spread of any disease. For instance, a person who’s sick might not be willing to stay home and avoid going to work if they need all their income to keep food on the table or a roof over their head. Paid sick leave eliminates that risk, letting the sick person stay home and not contaminate any of their coworkers.

Biden also points to some of his previous policy proposals, such as his plan to create a public option and expand access to health care, to “increase the resilience of all Americans in the face of a crisis.”

Finally, Biden calls on the US to play a role as a global leader, including by providing aid to countries to help them contain their own epidemics (and keep them from spreading to the US).

Some of the proposals could be implemented through executive action, but at least some parts would require Congress.

Hopefully, though, this isn’t something Biden will need to fully implement — because the Covid-19 pandemic should recede before he potentially takes office in January 2021. But Biden’s plan is a helpful guide for how the former vice president would handle a crisis like the one America is facing today, particularly compared to the current administration’s fumbled response.

Trump’s response so far has been a massive debacle

In many ways, Trump’s botched response to the coronavirus pandemic began years before the current crisis, when his administration dismantled the White House agency in charge of coordinating a response to disease outbreaks.

That move can explain why the administration has been so slow to respond, even with what experts call “low-hanging fruit” like testing. As of March 11, the US had tested a little more than 7,000 people, according to the Atlantic. In comparison, South Korea tested more than 66,000 people within a week of its first case of community transmission — a target the US completely missed, despite a much larger population.

The Trump administration promised to massively expand testing, but it’s run into problems time and time again, from the technical to the more practical. So the country has continued to lag.

“These kinds of things are what you prepare for, why you do preparedness planning, so this kind of thing doesn’t happen,” Kates said. “Right now everyone’s playing catch-up to try to address these gaps, and every day matters. A good preparedness plan would be addressing that from the outset.”

Trump, however, has defended the elimination of the White House agency, saying at a press briefing that the administration can simply scale up staff for these kinds of crises whenever it needs to. As Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security director Tom Inglesby told the Washington Post, that’s not how this works: “You build a fire department ahead of time. You don’t wait for a fire.”

Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly tried to downplay the coronavirus pandemic. He’s tweeted comparisons to the common flu, which in fact appears to be less deadly and spread less easily. He suggested, based on a self-admitted “hunch,” that the death rate is much lower than public health officials have projected. His administration requested $2.5 billion for the crisis — a fraction of what both Democrats and Republicans said is needed and ultimately passed.

The overall response has led even some conservatives to question Trump’s approach. The National Review editorial board wrote:

[Trump] resisted making the response to the epidemic a priority for as long as he could — refusing briefings, downplaying the problem, and wasting precious time. He has failed to properly empower his subordinates and refused to trust the information they provided him — often offering up unsubstantiated claims and figures from cable television instead. He has spoken about the crisis in crude political and personal terms. He has stood in the way of public understanding of the plausible course of the epidemic, trafficking instead in dismissive clichés. He has denied his administration’s missteps, making it more difficult to address them.

On Wednesday night, Trump appeared to finally confront the reality of the crisis in a televised statement from the Oval Office — acknowledging that the outbreak is now a pandemic. But even then, he only promised a limited travel ban for most of Europe, which won’t address the spread of the disease within the US, and some economic relief measures.

This is exactly what Biden, as a presidential candidate, is now trying to draw a contrast with, trying to present an image of competent, serious leadership that Trump has for years failed to project.

The Trump presidential campaign, at least, appears to be taking the contrast seriously. Even before Biden’s speech, the campaign sent out an email blast titled “Joe Biden’s Incompetence and Misinformation Risks American Lives.” In a statement released after the speech, spokesperson Tim Murtaugh argued, “President Trump acted early and decisively and has put the United States on stronger footing than other nations. His every move has been aimed at keeping Americans safe, while Joe Biden has sought to capitalize politically and stoke citizens’ fears.”

So far, though, those kinds of assurances have done little to calm the criticism toward Trump.

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21177099/joe-biden-coronavirus-covid-19-plan

[jj3jordan 2,061]

Well you can't invent test kits that don't exist. You can't order people to find a cure faster or develop a vaccine faster.  Economic strategies are being worked. Having a pre-existing agency is great, maybe even something he could have assisted with when he was VP 3 years ago.  I'm doubting there is anything Trump could have done that would have elicited praise from the usual Trump hating suspects on this board.   If somebody really thinks Trump isn't listening to his experts and making informed decisions based on their input then, well, maybe Joe will get elected and somebody will hand him a speech to read and all will be well.

[homersapien 11,447]

17 hours ago, jj3jordan said:

Well you can't invent test kits that don't exist. You can't order people to find a cure faster or develop a vaccine faster.  Economic strategies are being worked. Having a pre-existing agency is great, maybe even something he could have assisted with when he was VP 3 years ago.  I'm doubting there is anything Trump could have done that would have elicited praise from the usual Trump hating suspects on this board.   If somebody really thinks Trump isn't listening to his experts and making informed decisions based on their input then, well, maybe Joe will get elected and somebody will hand him a speech to read and all will be well.

The Obama administration created the pandemic task force as part of the National Security Council, so Biden probably was involved.

Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised

WASHINGTON — Public health and national security experts shake their heads when President Donald Trump says the coronavirus “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.”

They’ve been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump administration’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.

“It would be nice if the office was still there,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health, told Congress this week. “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a mistake (to eliminate the unit). I would say we worked very well with that office.”

The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Barack Obama to Trump in 2017.

Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.

“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed Friday in The Washington Post.

She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”

It’s impossible to assess the impact of the 2018 decision to disband the unit, she said. Cameron noted that biological experts remain at the White House, but she says it’s clear that eliminating the office contributed to what she called a “sluggish domestic response.” She said that shortly before Trump took office, the unit was watching a rising number of cases in China of a deadly strain of the flu and a yellow fever outbreak in Angola.

“It’s unclear whether the decision to disband the directorate, which was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser, was a tactical move to downgrade the issue or whether it was part of the White House’s interest in simplifying and shrinking the National Security Council staff,” Cameron says.

The NSC during the Obama administration grew to about 250 professionals, according to Trump’s current national security adviser, Robert O’Brien. The staff has been cut to about 110 or 115 staffers, he said.

When Trump was asked on Friday whether closing the NSC global health unit slowed the U.S. response, the president called it a “nasty” question because his administration had acted quickly and saved lives.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said.

Earlier, when asked about it, he said: “This is something that you can never really think is going to happen.”

On Saturday, John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser, dismissed claims that “streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation’s bio defense are false.’’ In a tweet, he said global health “remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis. The angry Left just can’t stop attacking, even in a crisis.’’

For many years, the national intelligence director’s worldwide threat assessment has warned that a flu pandemic or other large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease could lead to massive rates of death and disability that would severely affect the world economy. Public health experts have been blowing whistles too.

Back in mid-2018, Fauci told Congress: “When you have a respiratory virus that can be spread by droplets and aerosol and ... there’s a degree of morbidity associated with that, you can have a catastrophe. ... The one that we always talk about is the 1918 pandemic, which killed between 50 and 100 million people. ... Influenza first, or something like influenza, is the one that keeps me up at night.”

The White House says the NSC remains involved in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

A senior administration official said Friday that the NSC’s global health security directorate was absorbed into another division where similar responsibilities still exist, but under different titles. The work of coordinating policy and making sure that decisions made by Trump’s coronavirus task force are implemented is still the job of the NSC.

Some lawmakers aren’t convinced.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., and Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, have introduced a bill that would require future administrations to have experts always in place to prepare for new pandemics.

“Two years ago, the administration dismantled the apparatus that had been put in place five years before in the face of the Ebola crisis,” Connolly said. “I think, in retrospect, that was an unwise move. This bill would restore that and institutionalize it.”

Connolly said the bill is not meant to be critical of the Trump administration. He said it’s a recognition that Trump had to name a coronavirus responder just like Obama had to name one for Ebola in 2014. “We can’t go from pandemic to pandemic,” Connolly said.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 4 passed the measure, which is co-sponsored by 37 Democrats and five Republicans. The full House has not yet voted on the bill.

Chabot said one of the bill’s main goals is to would require personnel to be permanently in place preparing for pandemics.

“Specifically, we need someone, preferable at the NSC, to quarterback the U.S. government’s response since that response inevitably involves several agencies across the government,” Chabot said. “Our bill would make this position permanent.”

Former Obama administration officials insist that the Trump White House would have been able to act more quickly had the office still been intact.

“I think if we’d had a unit and dedicated professionals looking at this issue, gaming out scenarios well before ... we might have identified some of these testing issues,” says Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s homeland security adviser, said at a recent forum on coronavirus. “There would have been folks sounding the alarm in December when we saw this coming out of China, saying ‘Hey, what do we need to be doing here in this country to address it?”

Ron Klain, who managed the government response to contain and mitigate the spread of Ebola in 2014, agreed.

“If I were back in my old job at the White House ... I’d be pushing to have us do 30 million tests — to test people in nursing homes, to test people with unexplained respiratory ailments, to test the people who regularly visit nursing homes, to test healthcare workers,” Klain said recently at the event hosted by the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-disbanded-nsc-pandemic-unit-that-experts-had-praised/2020/03/14/aa09132c-65ac-11ea-8a8e-5c5336b32760_story.html

[jj3jordan 2,061]

Bad timing huh.

[AFTiger 282]

...officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stymied private and academic development of diagnostic tests that might have provided an early warning and a head start on controlling the epidemic that is now spreading across the country. …the CDC required that public health officials could only use the diagnostic test designed by the agency. That test released on February 5 turned out to be badly flawed. The CDC’s insistence on a top-down centralized testing regime greatly slowed down the process of disease detection as the infection rate was accelerating. … On February 29, the FDA finally agreed to unleash America’s vibrant biotech companies and academic labs by allowing them to develop and deploy new tests for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Quoting the New York Post:

Overregulation of diagnostic testing has played a major role in this delay... Test protocols using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) were publicly available shortly after Chinese researchers published (or described) the sequence of the virus in mid-January. The World Health Organization (WHO) used a freely available German procedure to create a test kit, shipping 250,000 tests to 159 laboratories worldwide. … CDC testing criteria have precluded recognizing community spread because of requirements stipulating recent travel to China or exposure to an infected person. Adherence to these guidelines delayed testing in the first probable case of community transmission… The FDA has not allowed the experienced and highly skilled professionals at public-health, academic and commercial laboratories to set up their own laboratory developed tests (LDTs), and no manufactured test kits have been authorized for sale in the US. In Europe, several companies, at least one US-based, have regulatory approval to sell test kits there.

In short, the last thing we need to effectively combat pandemics is a more centralized and bureaucratic health care system.

https://tinyurl.com/wz48rpc

[homersapien 11,447]

The FDA is the relevant regulatory body. 

So who appointed Stephen Hahn, the head of the FDA?

 

 

 

[homersapien 11,447]

The idea that we don't need centralized (federal) organizations to safeguard public health and regulate the healthcare industry is just wrong.  We cannot afford to allow the production of unregulated drugs and medical devices by for-profit industry.  (See the Thalidomide disaster for an example why.)

There is no private sector than can assume this role, by definition.

(In fact, we would be far better off as a country in dealing with pandemics if had universal healthcare coverage.  There are no doubt people who need to be tested avoiding so because of out-of-pocket costs.)

You are correct in that the private sector should be responsible for delivering the actual services.

 

[I_M4_AU 7,999]

The problem with bureaucrats is they are so ingrained in their process they are slow to react to any *out of the box* type of situation and, therefore, slow to react in a timely manner to unusual circumstances. We have seen that in the last month or so and this transcends any administration.

If you believe Biden would have handled this better you are just speculating as the left are still telling anybody that will listen that Trump is racist by instigating the travel ban.  

As to universal healthcare is concerned, this pandemic highlights that private industry can react quicker than government in situations like this. If you didn’t have private industry, which would be eliminated by single payer (government run) healthcare, we would be like Europe right now.  I know some may disagree.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

38 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

The problem with bureaucrats is they are so ingrained in their process they are slow to react to any *out of the box* type of situation and, therefore, slow to react in a timely manner to unusual circumstances. We have seen that in the last month or so and this transcends any administration.

If you believe Biden would have handled this better you are just speculating as the left are still telling anybody that will listen that Trump is racist by instigating the travel ban.  

As to universal healthcare is concerned, this pandemic highlights that private industry can react quicker than government in situations like this. If you didn’t have private industry, which would be eliminated by single payer (government run) healthcare, we would be like Europe right now.  I know some may disagree.

This completely ignores the fact that the head of our government essentially denied that there was a problem until about Monday of last week.  We absolutely could have acted faster and earlier.  The administration took steps to thwart that, including essentially dismantling the pandemic response team early in his administration.  Then, when we knew more about COVID-19, the President essentially said it was no big deal for weeks.

The government absolutely could have and should have mobilized faster here.  But the person at the top has to lead that charge.  He failed all of us on that end.

Just read this thread of his quotes, in timeline order, about the issue and then tell me that kind of response transcends any administration.  Hint: it doesn't.  Both Bush's, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama all would have acted in a more clear, decisive, and forthcoming manner.

https://mobile.twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1238132406642761728

[AFTiger 282]

Not sure that the finger pointing helps right now. We need to focus on getting through this. I do know that all of the reporting has only confused the public hence the panic buying.

[AUDub 11,184]

5 minutes ago, AFTiger said:

Not sure that the finger pointing helps right now. We need to focus on getting through this. I do know that all of the reporting has only confused the public hence the panic buying.

I wouldn't phrase it "finger pointing."  Rather, I would phrase it "failure analysis." 

[Mikey 16,734]

On 3/12/2020 at 5:01 PM, homersapien said:

Biden’s plan takes a two-pronged approach to the coronavirus outbreak. First, he promises “a decisive public health response” focused on free testing, improved access to treatment, the development of a vaccine and treatments, and increased health care capacity. Second, he calls for “a decisive economic response” that prioritizes paid sick leave for anyone hit by the outbreak, as well as aid to hard-hit families and state and local governments.

Gee, that sounds a lot like what's already being done by the Trump Administration. Joe's 20-20 hindsight is an ugly thing to watch.

[I_M4_AU 7,999]

On 3/15/2020 at 12:20 PM, Brad_ATX said:

This completely ignores the fact that the head of our government essentially denied that there was a problem until about Monday of last week.  We absolutely could have acted faster and earlier.  The administration took steps to thwart that, including essentially dismantling the pandemic response team early in his administration.  Then, when we knew more about COVID-19, the President essentially said it was no big deal for weeks.

The government absolutely could have and should have mobilized faster here.  But the person at the top has to lead that charge.  He failed all of us on that end.

Just read this thread of his quotes, in timeline order, about the issue and then tell me that kind of response transcends any administration.  Hint: it doesn't.  Both Bush's, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama all would have acted in a more clear, decisive, and forthcoming manner.

https://mobile.twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1238132406642761728

The completely ignored statement is categorically false.  If you will recall Trump turned all xenophobic and closed our boarders to China almost immediately. When the new epicenter turned to Europe, he continued his xenophobic rant and closed those boarders to keep Americans safe.  One would have to thing that having a tightly controlled boarder would be a good thing, unless you are too woke.

This pandemic is unprecedented in that it spreads very fast and the protocols in place were inadequate (Those protocols were the CDC’s and have been in place for years). It did take a long time to recognize this, but actions are being taken.  We are ahead of China’s and Italy’s reaction and hopefully we will lessen the curve, time will tell.  We are were we are and the the focus should be looking ahead while learning from the past.

As to the past President’s reactions; I agree, they were very experienced politicians and Trump is a hard nosed businessman man.  Trump has adapted in a quick manner, somethings he does still won’t help, but overall he is handling the situation.  No body knows how things are going to work until he have enough time to analyze the steps we have already taken.  Panicking and throwing out every little criticism before see how the last step has worked is not the way to battle any situation.  This is the press as of today.  The press says they are criticizing, they don’t know enough to criticize. It reminds me of reading the game thread while the game is going on during the Bama game.

Analyzing how things have worked will have it’s time, just not know.  We are in the heat of the battle, we (individually) need to focus.  Keep healthy.

Oh by the way, the UK has quarantined everybody over 70 for at least 4 months and everybody else is free to congregate at will.  They are an island and can control their borders better than most countries, but a bold move.  Uncharted waters.   

[homersapien 11,447]

53 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

The completely ignored statement is categorically false.  If you will recall Trump turned all xenophobic and closed our boarders to China almost immediately. When the new epic center turned to Europe, he continued his xenophobic rant and closed those boarders to keep Americans safe.  One would have to thing that having a tightly controlled boarder would be a good thing, unless you are too woke.

This pandemic is unprecedented in that it spreads very fast and the protocols in place were inadequate (Those protocols were the CDC’s and have been in place for years). It did take a long time to recognize this, but actions are being taken.  We are ahead of China’s and Italy’s reaction and hopefully we will lessen the curve, time will tell.  We are were we are and the the focus should be looking ahead while learning from the past.

As to the past President’s reactions; I agree, they were very experienced politicians and Trump is a hard nosed businessman man.  Trump has adapted in a quick manner, somethings he does still won’t help, but overall he is handling the situation.  No body knows how things are going to work until he have enough time to analyze the steps we have already taken.  Panicking and throwing out every little criticism before see how the last step has worked is not the way to battle any situation.  This is the press as of today.  The press says they are criticizing, they don’t know enough to criticize. It reminds me of reading the game thread while the game is going on during the Bama game.

Analyzing how things have worked will have it’s time, just not know.  We are in the heat of the battle, we (individually) need to focus.  Keep healthy.

Oh by the way, the UK has quarantined everybody over 70 for at least 4 months and everybody else is free to congregate at will.  They are an island and can control their borders better than most countries, but a bold move.  Uncharted waters.   

"Every little criticism"???? 

Tracking Trump’s false or misleading coronavirus claims

he global outbreak of the novel coronavirus has confronted President Trump with a public health and economic crisis that requires consistent, accurate messaging to guide Americans. But the president often has played down the threats, offering false, misleading or ignorant statements.

We have fact-checked many of these claims and recorded them in our database of all of Trump’s claims. But now we are starting a page to list the most notable coronavirus statements in one place, in chronological order. We intend to keep updating this page as the crisis unfolds.

“We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

— Jan. 21, 2020 (interview)

Trump was asked during an interview with CNBC whether he had any concerns about a pandemic after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified a case of coronavirus in Washington state. That was the first sign that the virus might eventually spread via community transmission, but Trump dismissed any concern. Within weeks, Washington state would become the center of the outbreak in the United States.

“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

— Feb. 2 (interview)

Trump made this comment in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, who noted that there were now eight cases in the United States. The Trump administration had imposed an entry ban on all foreign nationals who were in the People’s Republic of China, excluding Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, in the previous 14 days, effective Feb. 2. Trump reportedly had been reluctant to impose the ban, citing his relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but the action was urged by his top health advisers. The virus was already spreading through the United States. But the testing criteria set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were extremely narrow: Only those with recent travel to China or those who had come into contact with a confirmed infection would be tested.

Ron Klain, the White House Ebola response coordinator under the Obama administration, told Congress on Feb. 5 that it was a misnomer to describe the administration’s action as a travel ban. “We don’t have a travel ban,” Klain said. “We have a travel Band-Aid right now. First, before it was imposed, 300,000 people came here from China in the previous month. So, the horse is out of the barn.”

Trump repeated a version of this statement on March 5 and March 6.

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”

— Feb. 10 (campaign rally)

Trump repeatedly predicted the virus’s quick demise around the time the World Health Organization said the virus had infected more than 46,000 people, had killed at least 1,116 and was on a path to spread vastly more widely. Administration public health officials disputed Trump’s prediction, which appeared to be rooted in the idea that flu season in the United States generally ends in the spring. The virus was already spreading in Singapore, where temperatures are akin to summer in the United States.

sked whether he agreed that the new coronavirus would be gone by April, Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, told Congress he did not. “Prudent to assume this pathogen will be with us for some time to come,” he said.

Trump repeated a version of this claim two more times on Feb. 10, as well as on Feb. 13, Feb. 14 and Feb. 19.

“The level of death with Ebola — you know, at the time, it was a virtual 100 percent.”

— Feb. 25 (news conference)

The death rate for people with Ebola is not and was not “a virtual 100 percent.” The case fatality rate (or the percentage of known infected people who die) of the virus does vary dramatically — from 25 percent to 90 percent — depending on the outbreak. In general, it averages around 50 percent. It’s hard to know the case fatality rate of the coronavirus yet, but estimates put it below 3 percent.

Trump repeated a version of this claim on Feb. 26.

“We're very close to a vaccine.”

— Feb. 25 (news conference)

Health experts say a vaccine for this coronavirus is at least a year away from mass distribution, if not longer.

“When you have 15 [cases in the United States], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

— Feb. 26 (news conference)

Trump apparently was not listening to his own news conference. He made this remark moments after Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that “the degree of risk has the potential to change quickly. And we can expect to see more cases in the United States.” Within three days, 12 more cases were identified in the United States, and one person had died. Within five days, there were more than 100 confirmed U.S. cases, and six people had died. Two weeks later, there were 1,000 cases and 28 deaths.

“This is a flu. This is like a flu.”

— Feb. 26 (news conference)

The new coronavirus appears to have a much higher fatality rate than the seasonal flu, possibly 20 times higher, but the outbreak was too new for a firm death rate to be determined. Moreover, it’s a new virus, not yet a seasonal one, although it’s possible covid-19 will become seasonal in the future.

“The flu in our country kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. That was shocking to me. And so far, if you look at what we have with the 15 people and their recovery, one is, one is pretty sick, but hopefully will recover, but the others are in great shape.”

— Feb. 26 (news conference)

 

Trump appeared nonplussed at learning some basic public health information. The precise number of deaths caused by the flu is not known, but the CDC offers estimates that in the past decade range from a low of 12,000 in the 2011-2012 season to a high of 61,000 in the 2017-2018 season (though that is a preliminary estimate).

But Trump misleadingly compared those numbers with the known cases of covid-19 in the United States. Tens of millions of people each year come down with the flu — possibly as many as 58 million in 2017-2018. The fatality rate of the seasonal flu in the United States is 0.1 percent. The new coronavirus appears to have a much higher fatality rate.

“I don’t think it’s inevitable. It probably will. It possibly will. It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level. Whatever happens, we’re totally prepared.”

 

— Feb. 26 (news conference)

Here, Trump contradicted Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who a day earlier had said: “Ultimately, we will see community spread in this country. It’s not a question of if but rather a question of when and how many people in this country will have severe illness.”

“But the same vaccine could not work? You take a solid flu vaccine — you don’t think that would have an impact or much of an impact on corona?”

— March 2 (remarks)

“No,” replied Leonard Schleifer, chief executive of Regeneron, which develops and makes vaccines. The executives meeting with Trump explained that the coronavirus was new and therefore could not be protected against by vaccines developed to immunize people against other viruses. The drug company executives repeatedly explained to Trump that it would take more than a year to develop, test and bring to market a coronavirus vaccine. But moments later, the president told reporters that the scientists’ timetable could be much shorter: “I don’t think they know what the time will be. I’ve heard very quick numbers, matter of months.”

 

“I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, this is just my hunch, and — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this.”

— March 4 (interview)

Trump’s “hunch” is not in line with current World Health Organization estimates, which found a crude mortality rate of between 3 and 4 percent. The WHO reports, “While the true mortality of covid-19 will take some time to fully understand, the data we have so far indicate that the crude mortality ratio (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between three to four percent, the infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower. For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1 percent.”

In other words, while Trump’s “hunch” may eventually prove correct, it will take time to know the true fatality rate for covid-19. During this interview, Trump also suggested the mortality rate was high because many people did not know they were affected and did not report an illness: “So, if we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”

“I will say, though, the H1N1, that was swine flu, commonly referred to as swine flu. And that went from around April of '09 to April of '10, where there were 60 million cases of swine flu. And over — actually, it's over 13,000. I think you might have said 17,000. I had heard it was 13,000, but a lot of deaths. And they didn't do anything about it.”

— March 4 (interview)

Under fire for a sluggish response, Trump started to target the Obama administration, especially its handling of the 2009 swine flu outbreak. But it’s false to say Obama “didn’t do anything about it.” In fact, Obama’s handling was widely praised at the time as the right mix of action and no overreaction.

On April 26, 2009, when only 20 cases of H1N1 — and no deaths — around the country had been confirmed, the Obama administration declared H1N1 a public health emergency. The administration quickly sought funding from Congress, receiving almost $8 billion. Six weeks later, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.

On Oct. 24, after more than 1,000 Americans had died of H1N1, Obama declared a national emergency. The estimated death toll in the United States during the H1N1 epidemic was 12,469 from April 2009 to April 2010, but that was much less than a forecast of 30,000 to 90,000 deaths made in August of 2009 by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. (This link will take you to the official CDC history on the outbreak.)

Trump repeated a versions of this claim several times on March 12, March 13 and March 15.

“The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing. And we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion. That was a decision we disagreed with. I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we’ve undone that decision.”

— March 4 (remarks)

Trump earned Four Pinocchios for this claim. Trump was looking for scapegoats to excuse his administration’s slow efforts to expand testing. But he cannot blame Obama.

There was no Obama rule, simply “guidance” documents concerning laboratory-developed tests from 2014 that never took effect and were withdrawn before Trump took office. The administration suggested, without evidence, that labs were confused because of previous regulatory actions by the Obama administration. But Trump had been president for three years and his administration already had been working with Congress on legislation concerning lab tests. If there was confusion by labs, the administration could have easily taken the action on allowing emergency authorization to create coronavirus tests sooner than it did.

Trump repeated a version of this claim on March 11.

“I don’t want any deaths, right? But over the last long period of time, when people have the flu, you have an average of 36,000 people dying. I’ve never heard those numbers. I would — I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, ‘Does anybody die from the flu?’ I didn’t know people died from the flu — 36,000 people died.”

— March 6 (remarks)

Trump said he did not know that people died of the flu. But his paternal grandfather was a victim of the first wave of the Spanish flu pandemic.

“Anybody that wants a test can get a test.”

— March 6 (remarks)

The day after these remarks, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said, “You may not get a test unless a doctor or public health official prescribes a test.” Reports from across the country have documented the scarcity of tests.

Moreover, the United States has lagged far behind other major countries in providing tests for possible cases. The CDC initially distributed flawed tests to state and local health departments. The lack of tests in the United States, compared with countries such as South Korea that have tested tens of thousands of people, has meant the possible spread of the virus in the United States may not be fully known. The Washington Post reported a number of mishaps that led to testing delays.rump made a variation of this claim on March 10.

“This blindsided the world. And I think we've handled it very, very well.”

— March 9 (news conference)

On Jan. 30, the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern.”

“I met with the leaders of health insurance industry, who have agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments.”

— March 11 (prepared speech)

This is wrong. Insurance companies have agreed to waive co-payments for testing but not for treatment if it turns out a person has been diagnosed with covid-19.

“And taking early intense action, we have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United States than are now present in Europe.”

— March 11 (prepared speech)

Once a country reaches 100 cases, the number of cases appears to increase 33 percent a day. The United States reached the threshold a little later than some European countries but appears to be following the same trajectory. Moreover, inadequate testing appears to be obscuring the number of cases in the United States.

“Don’t believe the numbers when you see, even on our Johns Hopkins website, that 1,600 Americans have the virus,” Marty Makary, a medical professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Yahoo News. “No, that means 1,600 got the test, tested positive. There are probably 25 to 50 people who have the virus for every one person who is confirmed.”

Trump repeated this claim on March 13.

“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.”

— March 11 (prepared speech)

Beyond the unverifiable claim about his administration’s efforts, there is no such thing as a “foreign virus.” Viruses can emerge anywhere on Earth. The Spanish flu that emerged in 1918, killing 20 million to 50 million people, is believed to have started in the United States — the first case was reported here — though no one knows for sure, except that it almost certainly did not start in Spain.

“I want to thank Google. Google is helping to develop a website. It’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.”

— March 13 (news conference)

With a not-so-subtle jab at the Obamacare website rollout, Trump boasted that the website he tasked Google with developing will “be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.” He falsely claimed that “Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now” and adding that “they’ve made tremendous progress.”

However, Trump oversold what was still only the germ of an idea. Around the time of Trump’s announcement, Google communications tweeted a statement from Verily, the life sciences division of Google parent company Alphabet that focuses on research and development concerning health issues: “We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing. Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.”

The New York Times reported that “the 1,700 engineers Mr. Trump mentioned were actually just Google employees who said a day earlier that they would be happy to volunteer their time on the project if needed.”

“As you know, Europe was just designated as the hot spot right now, and we closed that border a while ago.”

— March 13 (news conference)

Trump did not close the border with Europe. Only two days earlier, he announced a bar on the entry of foreign nationals who have been to any of the 26 countries in the Schengen area, the European Union’s border-free travel zone — which does not include Britain, the Republic of Ireland and 21 other European countries. It did not take effect until midnight on the day of this news conference. On March 14, Trump extended the travel restrictions to the Britain and Ireland.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/14/tracking-trumps-false-or-misleading-coronavirus-claims/

 

And that didn't even include shutting down the NSC Pandemic Unit:

Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-disbanded-nsc-pandemic-unit-that-experts-had-praised/2020/03/14/aa09132c-65ac-11ea-8a8e-5c5336b32760_story.html

[I_M4_AU 7,999]

How are you feeling Homer?  I hope your immune system is doing it’s job.  Mine’s good and focusing on the future.

[autigeremt 6,704]

12 hours ago, AFTiger said:

Not sure that the finger pointing helps right now. We need to focus on getting through this. I do know that all of the reporting has only confused the public hence the panic buying.

Never let a crisis go to waste 😳

 

 

[TexasTiger 13,017]

On 3/16/2020 at 8:57 AM, AFTiger said:

Not sure that the finger pointing helps right now. We need to focus on getting through this. I do know that all of the reporting has only confused the public hence the panic buying.

Trump spins out so much uncontested disinformation folks start to believe it— like you. It has to be countered at some point.

Morons slap heads here.↘️

[homersapien 11,447]

20 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

How are you feeling Homer?  I hope your immune system is doing it’s job.  Mine’s good and focusing on the future.

I'm worried about my 90 year-old mother who is still sharp as a tack and very social.

Of course, I turned 69 today, so I suppose I am somewhat at risk.  Otherwise, I'm pretty healthy except I fell three weeks ago while bucking a tree for firewood, spraining my shoulder and cracking some ribs.  (My two new knees aren't quite up to snuff just yet.)

Thanks for asking.

[I_M4_AU 7,999]

3 minutes ago, homersapien said:

I'm worried about my 90 year-old mother who is still sharp as a tack and very social.

Of course, I turned 69 today, so I suppose I am somewhat at risk.  Otherwise, I'm pretty healthy except I fell three weeks ago while bucking a tree for firewood.  I sprained my shoulder and cracked some ribs.  (My two new knees aren't quite up to snuff just yet.)

Thanks for asking.

I turn 70 in May, parents are no longer living.  Be blessed your mom is in good healthy and I hope wherever she is, the facility is taking precautions. Stay active and, of course, wash your hands often.  

[homersapien 11,447]

Just now, I_M4_AU said:

I turn 70 in May, parents are no longer living.  Be blessed your mom is in good healthy and I hope wherever she is, the facility is taking precautions. Stay active and, of course, wash your hands often.  

She lives in her own home in Leeds (and still drives).  Like I said, she's sharp as a tack.  Fortunately though,  my sister lives in the same neighborhood and there are other family in the general area.

We were planning a family reunion at my place in South Carolina in her honor this July.  I suppose it's possible we'll have to cancel.

[I_M4_AU 7,999]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

She lives in her own home in Leeds (and still drives).  Like I said, she's sharp as a tack.  Fortunately though,  my sister lives in the same neighborhood and there are other family in the general area.

We were planning a family reunion at my place in South Carolina in her honor this July.  I suppose it's possible we'll have to cancel.

With more testing kits available we should (hoping) have a handle on this thing by then.  Don’t cancel yet.

[AUDub 11,184]

30 minutes ago, homersapien said:

I'm worried about my 90 year-old mother who is still sharp as a tack and very social.

Of course, I turned 69 today, so I suppose I am somewhat at risk.  Otherwise, I'm pretty healthy except I fell three weeks ago while bucking a tree for firewood.  I sprained my shoulder and cracked some ribs.  (My two new knees aren't quite up to snuff just yet.)

Thanks for asking.

Happy Birthday, Homeslice. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

6 minutes ago, AUDub said:

Happy Birthday, Homeslice. 

This.

And:

 

[augolf1716 21,303]

Happy Birthday Homer............you old numnut

[AUFAN78 3,926]

On 3/14/2020 at 10:53 AM, homersapien said:

The Obama administration created the pandemic task force as part of the National Security Council, so Biden probably was involved.

Trump disbanded NSC pandemic unit that experts had praised

WASHINGTON — Public health and national security experts shake their heads when President Donald Trump says the coronavirus “came out of nowhere” and “blindsided the world.”

They’ve been warning about the next pandemic for years and criticized the Trump administration’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation.

“It would be nice if the office was still there,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health, told Congress this week. “I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a mistake (to eliminate the unit). I would say we worked very well with that office.”

The NSC directorate for global health and security and bio-defense survived the transition from President Barack Obama to Trump in 2017.

Trump’s elimination of the office suggested, along with his proposed budget cuts for the CDC, that he did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.

“One year later I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like COVID-19,” Beth Cameron, the first director of the unit, wrote in an op-ed Friday in The Washington Post.

She said the directorate was set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of fire — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire.”

It’s impossible to assess the impact of the 2018 decision to disband the unit, she said. Cameron noted that biological experts remain at the White House, but she says it’s clear that eliminating the office contributed to what she called a “sluggish domestic response.” She said that shortly before Trump took office, the unit was watching a rising number of cases in China of a deadly strain of the flu and a yellow fever outbreak in Angola.

“It’s unclear whether the decision to disband the directorate, which was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser, was a tactical move to downgrade the issue or whether it was part of the White House’s interest in simplifying and shrinking the National Security Council staff,” Cameron says.

The NSC during the Obama administration grew to about 250 professionals, according to Trump’s current national security adviser, Robert O’Brien. The staff has been cut to about 110 or 115 staffers, he said.

When Trump was asked on Friday whether closing the NSC global health unit slowed the U.S. response, the president called it a “nasty” question because his administration had acted quickly and saved lives.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump said.

Earlier, when asked about it, he said: “This is something that you can never really think is going to happen.”

On Saturday, John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser, dismissed claims that “streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation’s bio defense are false.’’ In a tweet, he said global health “remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis. The angry Left just can’t stop attacking, even in a crisis.’’

For many years, the national intelligence director’s worldwide threat assessment has warned that a flu pandemic or other large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease could lead to massive rates of death and disability that would severely affect the world economy. Public health experts have been blowing whistles too.

Back in mid-2018, Fauci told Congress: “When you have a respiratory virus that can be spread by droplets and aerosol and ... there’s a degree of morbidity associated with that, you can have a catastrophe. ... The one that we always talk about is the 1918 pandemic, which killed between 50 and 100 million people. ... Influenza first, or something like influenza, is the one that keeps me up at night.”

The White House says the NSC remains involved in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

A senior administration official said Friday that the NSC’s global health security directorate was absorbed into another division where similar responsibilities still exist, but under different titles. The work of coordinating policy and making sure that decisions made by Trump’s coronavirus task force are implemented is still the job of the NSC.

Some lawmakers aren’t convinced.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., and Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, have introduced a bill that would require future administrations to have experts always in place to prepare for new pandemics.

“Two years ago, the administration dismantled the apparatus that had been put in place five years before in the face of the Ebola crisis,” Connolly said. “I think, in retrospect, that was an unwise move. This bill would restore that and institutionalize it.”

Connolly said the bill is not meant to be critical of the Trump administration. He said it’s a recognition that Trump had to name a coronavirus responder just like Obama had to name one for Ebola in 2014. “We can’t go from pandemic to pandemic,” Connolly said.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 4 passed the measure, which is co-sponsored by 37 Democrats and five Republicans. The full House has not yet voted on the bill.

Chabot said one of the bill’s main goals is to would require personnel to be permanently in place preparing for pandemics.

“Specifically, we need someone, preferable at the NSC, to quarterback the U.S. government’s response since that response inevitably involves several agencies across the government,” Chabot said. “Our bill would make this position permanent.”

Former Obama administration officials insist that the Trump White House would have been able to act more quickly had the office still been intact.

“I think if we’d had a unit and dedicated professionals looking at this issue, gaming out scenarios well before ... we might have identified some of these testing issues,” says Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s homeland security adviser, said at a recent forum on coronavirus. “There would have been folks sounding the alarm in December when we saw this coming out of China, saying ‘Hey, what do we need to be doing here in this country to address it?”

Ron Klain, who managed the government response to contain and mitigate the spread of Ebola in 2014, agreed.

“If I were back in my old job at the White House ... I’d be pushing to have us do 30 million tests — to test people in nursing homes, to test people with unexplained respiratory ailments, to test the people who regularly visit nursing homes, to test healthcare workers,” Klain said recently at the event hosted by the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-disbanded-nsc-pandemic-unit-that-experts-had-praised/2020/03/14/aa09132c-65ac-11ea-8a8e-5c5336b32760_story.html

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/03/17/no_the_white_house_didnt_dissolve_its_pandemic_response_office_142683.html